


Only in Dreams

by whetstone



Category: Big Bang (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 23:15:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whetstone/pseuds/whetstone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two scenarios for the same story. Dreamfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only in Dreams

His dreams always start in Gummy’s apartment. There’s a party going on and the mass of people sprawls from the living room to the hallway to the balcony, where there is a bar. The people are all hands and shoulders and hips and Seunghyun contorts the planes of his body so he doesn’t have to touch them. His presence is fleeting, like steam over cellophane paper, and while he smiles and waves hello, stops to talk, this is a realistic dream. He twists himself into the corner of the balcony after four hours and smokes cigarette after cigarette, the smell of burning paper winding its way through his clothes and the skin of his index and middle fingers. There are grooves there, the bone worn down a little from how hard he grips his pens when he writes, and the tobacco scent pools into the gaps.

This is where Jiyong finds him. He appears magically, slipping snakelike from the teeming mass of life to settle beside him. His eyes are tired but they still slide into slits when he smiles. He sits and drinks from his glass that is full of something brown, not saying anything, tapping odd rhythms into the wood underfoot with one shoe and letting the air fan through the half-shaved slope of his hair. Jiyong drinks and drinks and drinks, until Seunghyun is out of cigarettes and there is a cache of empty glass glittering out from under their seat. The people press in and offer more and Jiyong says _yes, okay, yes, one more_ , and his eyelids slink over to hug his pupils.

The bottles and glasses soon fall over and tinkle into each other like wind chimes and then Jiyong is quietly heaving into Gummy’s potted bamboo plant. He wheezes, says _sorry_ after every gag. He holds himself against the bench with one hand, the other curled tight against Seunghyun’s knee. Seunghyun has a handkerchief clamped in one fist. The people (there are always people) clap him on the back and tell him he should have looked out for Jiyong, so he pats him on the shoulder a little. The cold of his rings against the exposed skin makes Jiyong shiver through another round of vomiting.

Youngbae sidles in, then, and takes the glasses away. He rubs a hand across Jiyong’s back, traces a slow treble clef against the smooth cotton tank top. He tilts his head to the side, waiting for Seunghyun to slide down the bench and crack awkward jokes to make them laugh, but he shakes his head no and wipes at the corner of Jiyong’s mouth with the handkerchief. It comes away yellow against the baby blue robots, the puffy white cloud print. Youngbae tells him to get some water and moves away, his black hat and black jacket melding into the night sky.

\--------------------------

The kitchen is pristine. There are utensils dangling from spindly metal holders on the gleaming granite counters and brass pots hanging on the creamy white walls. Jiyong’s arm is around his shoulder and his glassy smile cuts into the crook of Seunghyun’s neck as he heaves him onto a barstool. He crosses his arms against the island and pillows his head against them as Seunghyun clatters through the cupboards. He can’t find the cups, so he fills a coffee mug with water from the refrigerator dispenser and sits down beside him. He cradles the cold ceramic, nudging the slumped figure with his knee. Jiyong gets out a _wait_ and a _one second_ before he props himself back up again. He swallows and wobbles forward, and Seunghyun’s reflexes have always been bad. He doesn’t catch him in time and the mug dings onto the island, sloshing out its insides. Jiyong’s face is mashed into Seunghyun’s jacket and his laughter bubbles up from the black leather. He gets two hands flat against Seunghyun’s shoulders and he pushes himself up until they are face to face.

Jiyong carries the acrid tang of vomit and the dry scent of whiskey on his mouth and on his clothes. He says _sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry_ and backs away to lean against Seunghyun’s side, taking his hands and rubbing them together. He moves them back and forth twice and laughs again. “I’m exhausted,” he admits, dropping their hands into his lap.

“You work too hard,” Seunghyun says.

“You don’t work hard enough,” Jiyong teases. It snaps against Seunghyun like a rubber band because it isn’t true, it hasn’t been true in a long time and it makes him angry even though Jiyong is drunker than he has ever seen. He jerks his hands away and cracks his knuckles, each joint popping with a satisfying crunch. “Jesus, I’m sorry,” Jiyong says eventually. “Keep track of this, ‘cause I won’t keep saying it.” He spiders a hand against his fingers. It’s thin and gangly like the rest of his body and he coughs, spewing the smell of sour against the side of Seunghyun’s face.

“Can you just...”

“Wait,” Jiyong says. He squeezes Seunghyun’s knuckles, slipping fingers into the space between his thumb and his palm, clearing his throat. “Just wait. Listen to this.” He sits and breathes carefully through his nose, his hair wrinkling against the seams of Seunghyun’s jacket. He stays like this for a long time, so long that his breaths ease out and his shoulders slump and Seunghyun thinks he might be asleep. He reaches for the mug that is now half full of water but Jiyong jerks an arm out. He cinches Seunghyun’s elbow with his right hand and steadies himself, stares him in the eye.

Jiyong slurs _so I think I sort of love you_ against his mouth. He tastes like whiskey and vomit and chapstick and Seunghyun’s nose wrinkles against his face. This feels so wrong and he is so lost, but Jiyong is slipping the endearment in with his lips like he’s trying to keep it there with the nip of his teeth and the rasp of his tongue. Seunghyun doesn’t know what to do and so he sits there, hands clenched, trying hard not to retch. Jiyong pulls away, finally, choking like the words have burnt the insides of his cheeks. He sways back into the counter. “I’m sorry,” he says one last time, sounding quiet and tired and ashamed.

 

Wait.

 

This is a dream, and in dreams things work out the way they're supposed to.

In this dream they are stumbling into the kitchen together. Jiyong’s skin is impossibly warm under his palms and he’s had too much to drink again but that’s okay. He is drowsy with the weight of his drunkenness and he pinches Seunghyun’s cheek, recounts his second audition for their company. “You looked different,” he says, his fingers stumbling over the planes of Seunghyun’s face. “Skinny.”

Seunghyun thinks of sweating under fluorescent lighting, delirious with hunger, his body aching from another round of sit-ups and the flare of pride that had burst in his body when Jiyong crept into the room, eyes scanning the gauntly handsome figure that was his friend. “Puberty,” he says, even though they both knew that it was impossible, that it was a lie. Jiyong laughs and laughs and rings fingers around his wrist, tight. His eyes are uncharacteristically soft.

The mug is always full, the water bubbling up like a well and so they pass it between them. Jiyong doodles on a napkin with a takeout pizza pen and this time he smells mostly like mint shampoo, soju, a little bit of soap. His hair is brown, bangs long and flirting with the line of his brows. “Listen,” he says, and the water’s made them both half-sober and a little shy, but the words still come easy. Jiyong doesn’t have to fight to keep them there. They’re mumbled over, lost in the movement of chapped lips and the grips of hands and the slide of hair between nicotine-stained fingers. Seunghyun can even say it back, sort of, mumbling it into the crease of Jiyong’s neck. He leaves a mark there just to prove to himself that he did it.

He doesn’t let it fade. It gets redone on the living room couch, in either of their bedrooms, at bars when they are at their darkest, in the gym bathroom and in the kitchen over the rice cooker. In the mornings he watches Jiyong slap concealer over it, scooting around him to brush his teeth and style his hair and blow his nose. It’s one of the only things he doesn’t get teased for.

\--------------------------

These are both dreams (maybe the first is a nightmare). Reality is somewhere in the middle, muddled and less horrifying, but less perfect too. In reality he goes to Gummy’s when she asks him to on his days off and there is never any party, just her making lunch for her favorite dongsaeng. In reality Jiyong drinks more vodka than soju and is out of the house when the sky is still as inky-black as his natural hair color. In reality he comes home with hickeys from people Seunghyun doesn’t know and it makes the heart that’s now too big for his body clench and contract. In reality they blew into each other and splintered under the pressure, Seunghyun retreating and Jiyong pushing forward until neither of them knew where they were, what they were doing or where they had put themselves.

Seunghyun tells himself to be a man and so he stares at the bruise laid bare and perfect in his space and does nothing. And sometimes, he sleeps.


End file.
